


beyond the reach of her dreams

by anabel



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-07-27 09:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16216019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anabel/pseuds/anabel
Summary: In Anvard, Aravis reflects on her new life in the north.





	beyond the reach of her dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [frausorge](https://archiveofourown.org/users/frausorge/gifts).



The sun broke cold over Anvard’s walls, and Aravis, wakeful, watched it rise. 

Here in the north the touch of the sun was bright and clear, with a white austerity to it that Aravis found unrestful. It seemed particularly harsh on a morning such as this, after a sleepless night. The warmth and languor of a southern sunrise, accompanied by a balmy sea breeze, were only a half-grasped wisp of memory.

After a time Aravis arose and dressed, wrapping herself in a shawl, and went silently out of her room and down the stairs of the castle. King Lune’s servants were awake, laying fires and going quietly about their morning duties, but the royal household slumbered overhead. They had laughed and danced long after dark, and would not awake for some hours yet. As Aravis crossed the courtyard, a chill wind whispered in the air, and she drew her shawl closer, hurrying her steps.

In the kitchens, the head cook smiled at Aravis. “Good morning, my lady.” Her capable hands never ceased to knead the hearty wheaten bread that the northerners thrived on, with the rhythmic thumps that were the music of the kitchen. 

“Good morning,” Aravis said, with an acknowledging nod to the room. Besides the cook, there was the kitchen boy bringing in an armful of wood, a young scullion elbow-deep in the pot she was scrubbing, and several junior cooks busy at the spit and hovering over various pans, kitchen implements in hand. Breakfast might not be wanted for some hours yet, if the household stayed late abed, but the royal kitchens was already in full swing at dawn.

It was a world that Aravis slipped into with the ease of long acquaintance. In Calavar, the kitchens had been her refuge from the pinched lips and aggrieved glares of her stepmother. There she had been able to move with ease, the bustling, hectic routine a perfect place for a small girl to disappear. Had her stepmother cared to discipline her, a Tarkheena found in the kitchens might have brought punishment upon both herself and the servants who had indulged her, but luckily her stepmother was more concerned with ridding herself of her stepdaughter and clearing the nursery for her own children than she was in dictating Aravis’s daily life. As a result Aravis had spent her days at Cook’s hip, drowned in an enormous apron and soaking up both recipes and kitchen gossip. 

Calavar was far away now, and Anvard’s kitchens smelled foreign and unalike. Yet still Aravis found herself releasing a sigh as she breathed in the warm air of the cookfires, and something inside her unbent as she pulled on her worn apron. 

~*~

When Aravis was a little girl, she had dreamed of being a warrior, the hero of all Calormen. With the supreme self-absorption of childhood, she had ignored the fact that all the heroes in the stories were men. She would take her place among the great Tarkaans, and all would know her name, from Calavar to Tashbaan. 

When Aravis was an older girl, she had dreamed of a quiet life away from the vituperations of her stepmother, somewhere she could be free. The kitchens were such a place, and so was riding her mare Hwin with the wind whispering through her hair. Even in her dreams, however, she doubted such a place existed for her. 

When Aravis was a young woman, and had fled all that she had once known, she no longer knew how she might dream. All was new, uncertain. What dreams might there now be for her, a stranger in a strange land?

~*~

In Calavar, when she had been the young and pampered Tarkheena, Aravis had been indulged by her father’s cooking staff. They had told her stories and sung her songs, spun her fabulous tales that widened her eyes and plied her with irresistible, invariably sticky delicacies. 

In Anvard, the kitchen staff accepted her wordlessly, making a place for her with no fuss and little deference. The haughty Tarkheena that had looked down her nose at Shasta would have balked at the fraternal unconcern, but Aravis had changed in the months since she had left Calavar. These days she found it restful to sit in a corner, her hands flying as she peeled a never-decreasing pile of potatoes. Later she would make a pie, perhaps. Now she listened to the seaman’s shanty that an undercook was singing while he turned the spit, and she found the beginnings of a smile pulling at the corners of her lips.

~*~

Lucy blew in with the wind just as Aravis peeled the last potato. Her cheeks were rosy and her eyes bright, and her purpose was made clear by the picnic hamper she carried.

“Is it today?” she asked Aravis in an undertone, helping her to clean up the potato peelings. 

“Perhaps,” Aravis allowed, and wrapped up a few chocolate biscuits for Lucy’s hamper. Lucy reminded her of her old friend Lasaraleen in one respect only, and that was her love for sweet things. “We’ll see.”

Aravis had never had a sister, only brothers. Her older brother had fallen in the wars, the glorious hero she had once dreamed of being herself, and her younger brother was now Tarkaan in Calavar after the untimely death of their father. She missed both of her brothers, though they had never been close. When she left Calavar she had thought there would be little to miss, but that had been in the fierce defiance of her flight; sometimes she thought of Rishti, her childhood hero with his shining sword, or Ilsombreh, the solemn roly-poly child who had loved kittens above anything in the world, and there was an ache behind her breastbone.

But life moved ever forward, and could not be halted or retraced. Now Aravis had a sister, who rode across the hills with her and raced her to the horizon, who taught her how to hold polite conversation with the Talking Animals of the north (and not just Horses such as Bree and Hwin, who had learned Calormene manners during their captivity, but Badgers and Beavers and Fauns and so many more). She had even had a particularly memorable tea with a centaur and a dryad, with Lucy at her right hand and Mr Tumnus at her left. 

Lucy’s smile was as bright as the northern sun, and for love of her Aravis risked Cook’s wrath and filched a few more biscuits for the picnic hamper. 

~*~

The sun was well up when Aravis recrossed the castle courtyard and climbed the stairs once more, returning to the room she had quit at dawn. It was not warm, not as a southerner would call warm, but a sunbeam kissed her hair and she turned her face into it.

All was as she had left it, quiet and still, the bed a muddle of covers. But as she pushed the door shut behind her with a nimble foot, a face peeked out from under the covers.

“Breakfast is served, milady,” Aravis said.

The tray she carried had fried potatoes, and mushrooms, and tomatoes, and eggs fresh from the hens, and hearty wheaten toast, and sausages (not from a Talking pig, of course). 

“I love you,” Susan said, her voice a low throb of devotion, the ardour of a woman who danced late into the night and awoke with a ravenous appetite. “Have I told you that lately?” she asked, as she emerged from the covers and Aravis laid the breakfast tray across her lap.

“I never tire of hearing it,” Aravis said, and cupped her beloved’s face in both hands, kissing her deeply. 

Susan’s hair was even more rumpled when they parted. “Mmmmm. Now I’m awake.”

Aravis laughed, and tucked one of Susan’s wayward curls back behind her ear. “Eat your breakfast, and then I’ll wake you up some more.”

“Promises, promises,” Susan said, her mouth already half-full of mushroom.

The sun was trying to filter through the curtains, and Aravis went to the windows and pulled them back. Before them lay the mountain peaks of Archenland, capped with snow, and above them the wide blue sky of the north, crisp and enormous. 

Five years before, Aravis had never seen snow. Four years before, Aravis had hovered on the cusp of her future, not knowing how to dream of the future, when all her plans and dreams and hopes had been so suddenly arrested. 

Three years before, she had found a new dream.

“Do you remember the first time I kissed you?” she asked now, leaning against the window-seat, watching the love of her life demolishing a fried tomato. 

Susan swallowed, looking as contemplative as a woman could when she was bed-rumpled, her hair flyaway, her nightdress slipped intriguingly off of one shoulder. “How could I forget it? You were so nervous, and so sweet.”

“I had not thought such happiness possible,” Aravis said. “As a child, I never knew that love was something I could have. And you were so very beautiful.”

“Still am, I hope,” Susan said, with a cheerful wink, sopping up egg yolk with toast. 

Aravis smiled, a soft smile that seemed to thrum in her very bones. “Still are.”

It had been a spring day, and she had ridden back from Anvard to Cair Paravel with Lucy. She had often made the trip in those days, with or without her new set of squabbling brothers, whose competitive spirit was only bearable because of their general good humour. There had been flowers everywhere as they rode, and when she stopped to see Hwin and her new foal, Hwin’s apple tree had been in full blossom. 

So had the apple trees at Cair Paravel, and Susan had been walking in the grove, making a plan for a new arbour. This Aravis learned later; at the time, all she had seen was Susan’s beauty, and the way the sun dappled her hair as it filtered through the apple blossoms.

She had come to love Susan slowly, without knowing it. In Calavar she had never had a sister, and here in the north she had two – that was all it was, she had told herself, when she had found that she preferred Susan and Lucy’s company to that of all others, and Susan’s most of all. It was entirely unsurprising that their friendship should deepen and grow, until she scarcely needed to hear Susan speak to know what she was thinking. She rode with Lucy, and taught Susan how to bake pies; she learned how to shoot an arrow straight and true, and overcame her natural shyness in order to attend the grand Christmas festivities at Cair Paravel. At night by the fire she told the stories of her people, learned from Cook in her girlhood, and Susan told the stories of her people, from a land even more foreign than the north.

And then one day she had realised that her feelings for Susan and her feelings for Lucy were entirely different things. Lucy she loved as the sister she had never had, and always would. Susan – Susan she loved with a fierce, shocked joy, and it ran under her skin like wildfire. 

When she had been a Tarkheena, Aravis would never have been allowed to find her own way to love. Her future had always been intended to be sold for her father’s gain, and she had always known it to be so. Even when she had been very young, and had dreamed of following in Rishti’s footsteps to military glory, a warrior maiden of shining sword, she had known the truth somewhere deep inside. Rejecting that future – seizing her own fate and taking her freedom by sheer force of will – had brought her to a sweeter place than she had ever dared to imagine, far beyond the reach of her dreams.

Having come so far, it had been only a few steps more.

She had dismounted, there in the apple grove. She had walked to Susan, standing so tall and beautiful, knowing her love must be written all over her face, for it was bursting from her like the spring was bursting from the land. And Susan looked at her, reading her truth, and Susan smiled - and Aravis had seen in that smile the imminence of her happiness, and it had taken her breath away.

“Susan,” she had said, half-strangled, and reached a daring hand to brush an apple-blossom out of Susan’s hair.

“My Aravis,” Susan had said, so simple, so sure.

Aravis had kissed her then, and Susan’s hands had tangled in her hair.

(Lucy, still mounted next to Aravis’s mare, had wolf-whistled. Lucy was incorrigible.)

When Aravis had come to the north, her future had been a blank unknown. That day in the apple grove, for the first time since she had fled Calavar, she felt her future beginning to take shape once more.

~*~

“So,” Susan said, after breakfast was over and after they had decided to rumple the bed some more. “Do we have any plans for the day?”

Aravis leaned back in the pillows, full of contentment, tracing a finger over the curve of Susan’s bare hip. She liked the way it made Susan shiver. “There’s Corin’s dinner.”

(Cor and Corin insisted every year that they have separate birthday dinners. It was unfair, they claimed, to be forced to share, simply because they had happened to enter the world on the same day. Since some of the guests had to travel to attend, and a two-day celebration was more fun anyway, they were humoured by their friends and family. Cor’s birthday dinner had been the previous night – thus the dancing into the wee hours – and Corin’s was yet to come.)

“Before that,” Susan said, twining her fingers through Aravis’s.

“Lucy and the boys rode out for a morning picnic,” Aravis said. “I thought you and I could have an archery competition.”

“An archery competition?” Susan sat a bit straighter, her eyebrows shooting up. Aravis loved her competitive spirit, a mirror of her louder little sister’s. 

“Now you see why I fed you so well,” Aravis said. “I won’t have you saying I beat you because you were still depleted from Cor’s party.”

“I thought you fed me so well to give me energy for something else,” Susan said. A mischievous glint in her eye was Aravis’s only warning before Susan lowered her head to Aravis’s breast, and thinking suddenly became rather difficult.

“Well,” Aravis said, “that too,” and rolled them over into the covers for another round.

~*~

It was warmer on the archery range than it had been that morning. Anvard would always be colder than the south, but the noontime sun was pleasant as it fell on Aravis’s arms and glinted in Susan’s hair. She could smell the feast still being cooked in the kitchens as it wafted through the castle’s confines and out into the grounds. Her pile of peeled potatoes had no doubt already been put to good use.

Susan was winning, which was hardly a surprise. Though Aravis had learned to shoot quite well, and could best Lucy nine times out of ten, Susan’s gift was unmatched. Lucy called her Queen Robin Hood sometimes, which always made Edmund laugh. They had explained that it was a reference to a thieving rogue from their own land, whose skill with a bow made him legendary, and Susan had smiled when Aravis took offence at her love being compared to a common thief. 

Although Aravis had no hope of victory, she still enjoyed the game. Susan’s skill was a joy to watch, and Aravis could always attempt to beat her own personal best, even if Susan was out of reach. 

She watched Susan ready her shot, her face intent and her body poised as if it too hovered on the bowstring, waiting to be loosed. There was almost something magic here, in Susan’s calm sure mastery of her craft, in the way she became one with her bow in this instant before an arrow took flight. 

She watched Susan, and she memorised the moment. The bright northern sun and the blue northern sky; the white mountain peaks and the aromas of the kitchens; the crisp breeze and the soft ground underfoot. 

And at last, after Susan won, after they collected their arrows, when they sat on a nearby bench in the noontime sun, Aravis felt in her bones that it was time.

“When I left Calavar,” she said, her voice almost even, “I knew not what the future might hold for me. I only knew what I was fleeing, not what might lie ahead.”

“I still shudder when I think of you fleeing such a fate. I fled Rabadash, but I had Edmund, and all our friends, and I was returning to my home, not leaving it.”

“I had Hwin,” Aravis said, pressing the hand Susan had instinctively reached out to her. “And later Cor and Aslan.”

“Still, your bravery was immense.”

Aravis shook her head. “Not bravery, but necessity. I had no choice.” She took a breath, steadying her nerves. Now was the time to be brave and unafraid. “It was here in the north that I found choices, and so many of them that I scarce knew what to do. When all your old plans and dreams lie in ashes, and a new world rises unknown before you, finding a path is a daunting task.”

Susan did not interrupt her again, but listened, her face open and so, so very dear.

“All that I had ever wanted had fallen away, and I did not yet know what to replace it with. The north became my refuge and its people my friends, and slowly I built a new life here. Yet still there was a piece missing, something I yearned for but could not name. Until one day I found it – until one day I realised what my missing piece was.”

Susan’s eyes were wet now, shimmering, and her smile brought the words tumbling out of Aravis, topsy-turvy. “I hadn’t – I didn’t know that it was possible, to be so happy, to have such joy, but that day when I looked in your eyes and saw that you loved me too – oh, Susan! These years with you have been more than I ever could have dreamed of. You are my home and my heart, now and forever.”

“Now and forever,” Susan said, barely a whisper.

And Aravis found that in the end, all her nervousness, all the butterflies in her stomach that had kept her sleepless the night before, all of it slipped away, and there was only Susan, her Susan.

The question came so simply then, though her voice hitched. “Will you marry me?” 

“Yes,” Susan said, “ _yes_ ,” and kissed her, throwing her arms around Aravis’s neck with almost enough force to knock them bodily off the bench.

Aravis kissed her, and listened to her heart sing in her chest.

She was home.

~*~


End file.
